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     This document describes the API of the JGoodies Forms,
     a framework that helps you lay out and implement 
     elegant Swing panels quickly and consistently. 
     Forms makes simple things easy and the hard stuff possible,
     the good design easy and the bad difficult.

	<p>	 
	 Forms 1.1 requires Java 1.4 or later. 
	 A version for Java 1.3 is 
	 <a href="http://www.jgoodies.com/downloads/archive.html">here</a>.

	 
	 <h2>Getting Started</h2>
	 
	 Forms ships with a <a href="../tutorial/introduction.html">tutorial</a> 
	 and tutorial sources. The compiled tutorial is available as
	 <a href="http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/formsdemo/">Forms Demo</a>.
     And you can find more examples at
     <a href="http://www.JGoodies.com/freeware/">www.JGoodies.com/freeware</a>.
	As&nbsp;a&nbsp;next&nbsp;step you can study the 
	<a href="http://www.jgoodies.com/articles/">JGoodies articles and presentations</a>.
	

	<h2>Open Issue</h2>
	
    There's a weakness in the FormLayout that may require an API extension.
    Components that span multiple columns or rows do not affect
    the column&nbsp;width or row&nbsp;height resp., 
    but can in some cases expand the container.<br>
    I'm looking for a means to let the layout grid honor these components
    that is both powerful and easy to understand. 
    See item #3.5 in the accompanying FAQ for details and a workaround.



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